~ Free lance photographer in Yilan, Taiwan#1

Dodged #Nepartak

Yilan county last year was hit by a couple of really strong typhoons. The first one, Soudelor, arrived at the end of July making landfall between us and Hualien and dropping an absurd amount of rain (1300mm on our Taiping mountain, holy cow!). The second one, Dujuan, made landfall in SuAo, which is the southern tip of Yilan county. That meant the typhoon was at its strongest in our region and winds were absolutely crazy.

So it;s fair to say that when Windity showed this a few days ago we were less than thrilled:

Typhoon Nepartak was initially forecast to head to Japan. Instead it kept going straight, aiming towards Taiwan. The landfall shown in this picture would have been brutal for us, very similar to what Dujuan did last year.

As time went by though, the forecast kept changing. Nepartak looked to be less and less interested into heading North, and kept steering to the South.

This is Nepartak’s final landfall:

What a massive difference, that’s nearly 300kms to the South compared to the first image.

The result of that different trajectory was like night and day for us in Yilan. Not only have we been left outside from the area with stronger winds, but the mountains to our South sheltered us from most of the minor winds. We went through a night of good sleep (Soudelor and Dujuan didn’t allow that. NOt.AT.ALL) and when I woke up I was surprised to see the road being completely dry.

We’re experiencing some quick showers every now and then, but it’s a fairly enjoyable day.

The same can’t be said for people in the South, people living in Taidong got hit really hard. Their situation has been the complete opposite, a typhoon that was supposed to be uneventful for them, turned out to be a real disaster.

It will take days to assert the real damage done by Nepartak. Taidong is one of the regions in Taiwan that supply good tropical fruit as well as rice, many crops must have been damaged for sure. Not to mention the damage done to cars, trucks, train, building and other structures.

My GoPro in the balcony is recording a time lapse, I’ll upload it later today but it looks like it won’t be much different from what I produced yesterday.

I wish last year I was able to record typhoon Dujuan during the night, it was absolutely surreal. Complete darkness, it was like “The Nothing” from the Neverending Story.